After racking up 2002's top-grossing country tour, Kenny Chesney [ tickets ] sets out next week on the first leg of his 2003 touring schedule.

The latest round of shows behind last year's double-platinum "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems" currently stretches well into May, and follows a 2002 run that saw Chesney perform before a total of about 1.8 million fans.

That 2002 outing grossed over $24 million, ranking it as last year's highest-grossing country tour, according to the Dec. 28 issue of Billboard Magazine. Chesney responded to the news in a recent press release.

"When we started this tour, all I wanted was the have enough people show up so we could go back and play all these places that my heroes had played when I was growing up," he said. "I'd never headlined before, so I just wanted to not embarrass myself, do enough business that we could keep growing it! Obviously we did a little better than I'd hoped."

Chesney went on to say that some fans who attended his 2002 outing got an unexpected chance to hang with the singer before the show.

"When we realized there were people partying in the parking lot before the shows, we used to try to figure out how to sneak out there with a pitcher of margaritas and hang with 'em," he said. "You can't always do it 'cause it can be a security hassle, but that hanging with your friends, laughing and getting into it--that's a lot of what drew me to artists like Jimmy Buffett and Willie Nelson in the first place."

Chesney recently scored Billboard's Country Single of the Year Award for the "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems" cut "The Good Stuff."